Abstract

This study explores the effects of New Public Management (NPM) on trust amongst nursing professionals, nurses and nurse ward managers within the British National Health Service (NHS). Thirty-nine nurses and nurse ward managers, recruited randomly, participated in semi-structured interviews. The original data, collected in 2000-2002, are re-analysed from a discourse analysis perspective. The findings support and extend contemporary research. They show that nurses have a strong professional identity and commitment and that increasing managerialism is eroding trust. Nurses both accommodate and resist managerialist discourses. They conceptualise trust in terms of their own ward environment, line-manager and colleagues. Trust is reciprocal and related to previous experiences and other factors. Trust is beneficial to healthcare organisations, healthcare professionals and their patients. Good communication and openness positively influence the development of trust. Nurse ward managers play a pivotal role in translating contested managerialist discourse into nursing practice to sustain trust and effect professional patient care.

Abstract

This paper examines the conditions under which annual hours (AH) are likely to succeed or fail and the role of workplace partnership in delivering mutual gains. We explore two case studies, in one company with a positive experience and in a second where AH were regarded as a failed initiative. The case studies are constructed from interviews with trade union and management representatives in the companies involved; from secondary sources and from a worker survey. The findings echo previous research that AH can deliver mutual gains in both the presence and absence of workplace partnership (Author and Author, 2016) and that delivery of real mutual gains is the key driver of the long term viability of AH. However, the balance of mutual gains is subject to change and is strongly influenced by structural factors determining the suitability of AH to the particular enterprise.

Abstract

Drawing on the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS), this paper examines changes in the proportion of people aged over 50, active in the Irish labour market from 1998 to 2014. Results indicate that an increasing number of workers over 50 remain active, due mainly to the dramatic increase in the proportion of older females remaining in the labour force. By 2014 the 50 to 64 age group accounted for a quarter of all economically active people in the labour market between 15 and 64. Older workers are more likely to be employees and less likely to be employers or self-employed in 2014 compared to 1998. Older workers in lower-level occupations, particularly over the age of 60, are more likely to remain economically active. Level of education is strongly associated with the likelihood of older workers remaining economically active, particularly for the 50-59 age group and for females. .

Abstract

The so-called Buchanan report, commissioned by the Irish government and published in May 1969, comprised a set of proposals for regional industrial development in Ireland over the period 1966–86. The main thrust of the report was the concentration of the great bulk of new industrial employment creation in Dublin and eight proposed ‘growth centres’. The plan provided for the creation of powerful planning authorities to oversee development in the regions. The government rejected these proposals and opted instead to continue with the existing policy of widespread dispersal of new industry. While meeting with initial success, this policy proved unsustainable in the long term. The paper reviews the implications of the Buchanan report experience for the regional planning process in Ireland, arguing that failure to learn from this experience served to undermine the National Spatial Strategy, with a similar fate likely for the forthcoming National Planning Framework.

Abstract

In the fifty years since the publication of the Buchanan report, Regional Studies in Ireland, Ireland has transitioned from a rural to an urban society. Although a number of spatial plans have been introduced at regional and local levels, the growth of over 1.5 million people in the urban population has occurred in the absence of any strong national-level direction of spatial or settlement policy. This paper examines the nature of urbanisation in the half-century since 1966, by looking at the development of the urban hierarchy of cities and towns. Significant long-term changes in both the structure and the spatial expression of the urban hierarchy are identified, on the basis of which urbanisation is characterised as having been deconcentrated and decentralised. The paper identifies some implications of the observed shifts for contemporary policy concerns, and in particular the 2018 National Planning Framework.

Abstract

The evolution of spatial planning in Ireland, and more widely, has been a complex process in which many narratives have been explored at different times. In 2018 the government published the National Planning Framework (NPF) to guide and support the achievement of a challenging and potentially transformative development strategy for Ireland 2040. The NPF is grounded in a vision that sets out to be disruptive of what has become embedded as the status quo in political, administrative and planning decision-making. While it is a very innovative addition to the portfolio of government policies and strategies, it is not the first time that radical visions have been proposed. This paper reviews previous visions and plans for regional development that have been proposed over the last seventy-five years, and critically compares and contrasts the approaches represented by the National Spatial Strategy (2002–20) and the NPF (2018–40), including the subsequent draft regional spatial and economic strategies. The implications of the population projections and the proposed settlement patterns for the achievement of the NPF objective of effective regional development, which is expressed as a regional parity target, are closely examined.

Abstract

A decision not to prohibit or limit high-risk mortgage products in Ireland in 2005 reveals the extent to which three important factors – interests, institutions, ideology – impact on information processing by decision-makers, and reveals irrationality or otherwise in the process. This article summarises the events leading up to the bad decision on 100 per cent loan-to-value (LTV) mortgages in November 2005. This case reveals the nature of the interaction between government departments, regulators and banks at a critical time before the crash, and shows how a department’s interests can interact with institutional factors, and the ideological context, to prompt poor rational and irrational information processing, and lead to a bad decision. In particular, the dominance of a market ideology which raised the threshold for what information was necessary before intervention would be made, combined with the low institutional standing of the department seeking intervention, produced a suboptimal outcome. Finally, the case provides evidence of irrationality (e.g. groupthink, herding) within institutional actors, rather than between them.